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Social Media News Releases Explained
Author: Deltina
Hay
You've surely heard the term "social media news release" in all the
buzz about the new, social Web, but what does it mean? A social media
news release is just like a traditional news release, except that it is
also social media and Web 2.0 optimized. In short, this kind of news
release encourages interactivity, is easily shared in the social Web,
and contains a number of other Web 2.0 elements.
Generally, these additional elements include:
* Multimedia items, such as downloadable images, PDF/DOC files, or
audio/video files.
* A way for readers to comment directly on the news release content.
* An obvious and easy way for readers to bookmark the news release in
social bookmarking sites, or to share it via email.
* Technorati tags and links to purpose-built del.icio.us pages.
If you or your business produce online or email press releases
regularly, you should be utilizing social media news releases. Like
everything else on the Internet today, there is an expectation that
content will be interactive, easily shared, and will offer sources to
similar information. If your news releases do not live up to these
expectations, your chances for major media coverage may be hurt. It's
fairly simple to create your own social media releases, or you can use
a service like PRWeb. And, since a social media news release is just a
traditional release with added elements, you do not need to change your
present format, just include some additional sections. These added
elements include:
Multimedia section: Here you will offer a number of downloadable items,
including PDF or Word documents, such as book excerpts, advanced
reviews, white papers, brochures, etc., and images, like author photos,
company executive photos, book cover art, company logos. Also provide
any relevant podcasts and video clips in this section.
Technorati tag section: Use this section to list links to Technorati
pages that are tagged with a list of good key terms relevant to your
news release.
Social bookmarking section: In this section, provide links to any of
your relevant purpose-built del.icio.us pages. You could also provide
links to relevant pages on Digg.com or any other social bookmarking and
crowd-sourced news sites.
Sharing and commenting: In addition to the sections listed above, you
should also make it as easy as possible for your readers to share or
bookmark your release in any number of ways. Allowing visitors to
comment on your news release makes it truly interactive.
Social media section: If you don't have a social media newsroom to
refer your readers to, you should consider adding a section to your
news release that lists where you have a presence in the social Web.
Link to your profiles in places like MySpace, Facebook, Squidoo,
Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, etc.
Creating your news releases using a blogging platform like WordPress
makes it easy to incorporate the additional social media optimizing
features. Commenting is already built in, and there are a number of
good plugins for adding Technorati tags to WordPress posts and for
social bookmarking, among other features.
Check out some social media news release examples here:
http://owenegertonnewsroom.com/?p=54
http://www.shiftcomm.com/Web20Releases/6102008.html
http://www.puresoapboxnewsroom.com/?p=13
http://www.hiddenlandsofnodnewsroom.com/hiddenlandsofnod/?p=33
Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/computers-articles/
social-media-news-releases-explained-518245.html
About the Author
Deltina Hay is the principal of Social Media
Power, a Web 2.0 development firm in Austin. Ms. Hay's graduate
education in computer science, applied mathematics, and psychology led
her naturally to social
media consulting. Find out more about using social media and
Web 2.0 tools from her new straight forward, easy-to-follow e-book on social
media marketing and Web 2.0.
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